markwilding wrote:I think calling people lazy is wide of the mark. Much of it can be put down to social changes.

I think that putting eating processed crap down to social changes is an old cliche as the theory of people having less time on their hands is too. I'm convinced people have more time on their hands nowadays or at least very similar.

Both my mum and dad worked full time when I was kid and were out early until late, there was no problem for them putting freshly cooked meals on the table.

Laziness, is a factor and a lot of kids are being brought up not to even notice this. You only have to look at schools.Our Village junior school is an example which I'm sure is not unique. The 4x4s fighting to get pole position outside the gates at 3.30 pm, the chaos at 8.45 with the same vehicles dropping off, and I swear most of these kids live well within a mile of it.

Our neighbour drives her 2 600 metres and also collects, why I wonder? Also she has far more time on her hands than my mother did, as does her husband who is always at home but works in the "mysterious" IT field.

And yes, in conversation these people think M&S food is the real deal ..........I doubt they know where the nearest good butcher,greengrocer, fishmonger is either.

Wicksey said"When we go to the UK on our short visits we go around M&S and Tescos drooling over all the ready meals, but I must admit I often find them salty and over processed. "

Exactly, and so do I it is awful but Mrs keeps giving it a try every month or so when someone in work pesters her to give their lates offering a try. In fact I'd bet anybody used to proper fresh produce would find what you did, and M&S are rated as one of the best.

DA,Sometimes it seems to me that you are hopelessly out of touch with modern life. Your total lack of understanding of how much work is involved in IT and the fact you don't even seem to recognise it as a proper job and its importance demonstrates that.

Not everybody is so lucky to live in an area where all the young mums own a 4x4 and Maybe if the press didn't frighten the life out them and we got back to not fearing everything that moves might give a more proportionate view of danger but as it stands, this will continue. The school run is also a consequence of Thatcher allowing people to choose schools based on performance. Gone are the days when people went to their local school as in my day.

Just because you don't see loads of cars outside school gates in Spain doesn't mean children here walk to school. Most take the school buses.

Both my wife and I both work and I certainly wouldn't want to spend hours cooking every day and I wouldn't expect my wife to do so either. It has nothing to do with laziness but more to do with quality of life. Having said that, grilling a piece of fresh fish or meat with fresh vegetables and rice pasta or rice isn't time consuming.Even so, I sometimes a enjoy a plate of Sausage chips and baked beans and I don't care what anybody thinks.

Last edited by markwilding on Wed Aug 09, 2017 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Getting up at 05.00 for a day shift that finished at 19.00, never seeing daylight, the incessant rain, the disgusting roads, Stannylands Rd in particular (somebody here knows). Decent Cumberland sausage, although the German and Spanish varities are better than most, no bread or bran you see.Decent Pork pies, Cornish Pasties and I would say Scotch Eggs but I make my own.A night shift that started at 19.00 and finished at 07.00 so never seeing daylight, the incessant rain, the disgusting roads etc.

Mark there's nothing wrong with sausage, chips (although I'd prefer mash) and baked beans from time to time! Just as much as I like an English steak pie, but I wouldn't eat them all the time. Cooking fresh food doesn't mean spending hours preparing elaborate things, just as you say, it can just be some grilled meat or fish with veg.

I admit when we lived and worked full time in the UK we did rely more on ready prepared food, but now (17 years on) I think there is a lot more choice of foodstuffs in the UK, including ready prepped veg, that you can use to get fresh meals prepared quicker.

I'm lucky now to have the time to make things for the freezer, like lasagne or slow-cooked stews etc, and try to have some portions always available for nights when I don't feel like cooking much. At the moment, just boiling pasta creates too much heat in the kitchen, so we either use the gas BBQ if we want meat and fish, or I use the side gas ring if I wanted to fry anything. Mind you, standing outside last night frying salmon croquettes in that heat was a bit much I am getting a tad bored with salads though

We are not big meat eaters and I would rather have quality than quantity and would love to have more choice, especially of free range meats, so the UK butchers mentioned on here would be lovely to have locally. Sausages these days are Quorn when I can get them as my OH has not ever got over the food poisoning he had after eating pork sausages a few years back, (mentally rather than physically!) and we eat very little processed meats these days. I make a fair amount of veggie meals especially in the summer.

Problem is Miro people have turned lazy and this is the cost of it. ------------------A very blinkered opinion. Times have changed from the baby boomers upto the 80's when mums stayed at home and had a home cooked meal on the table for the husband and kids as she didnt need to work. Cooking skills are not being passed on to the next gen because the sterotypical stay at home house wife is getting less and less. Women are out working just the same as the men. People in the uk are working all the hours just so they can get to the end of month with no money left after all the bills are paid.people struggle as money goes to money in the U.K unless you are lucky enough to have wealthy grandparents/parents or lucky enough to live in the south east and sell,thanks to maggie grannies ex council house for a quater of a million than for most people day to day living his hard enough I would hardly want to come home and make a full on meal after a 12 hr day either. People also work different shifts. as someone who worked them it totally messes with eating plans.So to say people are lazy when in most cases they are the complete opposite is an easy reaction to have without looking into things deeper. Typical daily fail mentality.

Re processed food spain has a big problem with obesity. How many different versions of hot dogs and processed meat can you have in one supermarket! And a 50 pack of magdelanas is the smallest you can get! And why cant i buy a normal soze packet of crisps. You know very well if i buy one of the supersized ones im gonna end up eating the whole dam packet! No wonder theres so many fat spanish kids walking around.heck knows how worse they would be if they were stuck inside for 9 months with UK weather. That surprised me alot. Theres the whole med diet that is raved about but i guess spain suffers the same problems of women going out to work and the cooking skills not been passed on as they used to be

Last edited by elusive on Wed Aug 09, 2017 3:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Wicksey,That seems to be a more reasonable point of view. obviously, i wouldn't advocate eating unhealthy food and it seems to me that getting the right balance is important.

I have a problem with the older generations pontificating over from a privileged position over the younger generations, who have much it more difficult than us.

With mash I like sausages with fresh vegetabless and lashings of thick gravy.

Elusive,Good point regarding obesity in Spain. A doctor friend who specialises in children's diets here says that Spain has one of the highest levels of child obesity in Europe. The UK and Ireland having the worst..

It doesn't surprise me when I see the amount of crisps and sweets children bring to my classes

I know that when I was leaving the house at 6.30 am and not getting home before 7.00 pm at the earliest (11pm on days when I had to go to London for meetings) I certainly didn't feel like even putting together grilled meat and salad, it was as much as I could do to shove something ready prepared in the oven or the microwave (although I'd buy pre-prepped vegetables to eat with it).

What does bemuse me is people who aren't working, and on benefits. claiming to be living in poverty when their diet consists almost entirely of supermarket ready meals and unhealthy snacks, supplemented by takeaways. It would work out cheaper if they bought the ingredients and cooked for themselves. We were told by local taxi drivers, when we lived in the UK, that it was quite normal for unemployed people living in social housing to order a taxi to collect and deliver a takeaway for them - and where they lived was less than a mile from the town centre where the takeaways were. Now that really is lazy.

However, I do recognise that as others have said, a lot of small independent shops and also local markets where fresh vegetables and fruit could once be bought cheaply have gone now, and especially if they don't have a car it can be difficult for people to get to decent shopping facilities rather than a convenience store just down the road which only sells a limited range of goods, and those at inflated prices.

markwilding wrote:Good point regarding obesity in Spain. A doctor friend who specialises in children's diets here says that Spain has one of the highest levels of child obesity in Europe. The UK and Ireland having the worst..

It doesn't surprise me when I see the amount of crisps and sweets children bring to my classes

We sat on a bus last week opposite an overweight mother with two daughters. The elder one (also decidedly overweight, aged about 8 or 9) chomped her way through a very large packet of popcorn (literally shoving handfuls of it into her mouth) in the space of a 20 minute journey. I felt queasy just watching. And that was just before lunchtime, maybe they would have eaten a meal afterwards as well. And people wonder why there's an obesity crisis.

What does bemuse me is people who aren't working, and on benefits. claiming to be living in poverty when their diet consists almost entirely of supermarket ready meals and unhealthy snacks, supplemented by takeaways. It would work out cheaper if they bought the ingredients and cooked for themselves. We were told by local taxi drivers, when we lived in the UK, that it was quite normal for unemployed people living in social housing to order a taxi to collect and deliver a takeaway for them - and where they lived was less than a mile from the town centre where the takeaways were. Now that really is lazy.----------------------------------

Sorry for the full copy as im on my phone and its impossible to use the quote marks. I think thats part of the issue of younger people nowadays dont know how to cook.plus ready food being easily bought at cheap prices in places like iceland. A chicken dinner for £1.50 etc etc.5 plus years ago jamie oliver did a tv show based on that in rotherham. Basically meeting up with young unemployed families living in poverty and showing them how to cook cheap decent food.somethings gone wrong with society when it takes a celeb chef to create a t.v programe about something that is such a basic thing that should be passed down or taught properly in schools etc.

Its very worrying when you see the amount of not just fat but obese kids (young kids) walking around. Of course there could be medical issues but you do wonder

elusive wrote:Sorry for the full copy as im on my phone and its impossible to use the quote marks. I think thats part of the issue of younger people nowadays dont know how to cook.plus ready food being easily bought at cheap prices in places like iceland. A chicken dinner for £1.50 etc etc.5 plus years ago jamie oliver did a tv show based on that in rotherham. Basically meeting up with young unemployed families living in poverty and showing them how to cook cheap decent food.somethings gone wrong with society when it takes a celeb chef to create a t.v programe about something that is such a basic thing that should be passed down or taught properly in schools etc.

I do remember watching that programme. The young mother with a 5 year old daughter who said she had not once in the child's entire life cooked a meal for her, they existed on nothing but takeaways, pizzas, chips and bags of crisps, stuck in my mind. Jamie Oliver has had a lot of stick for it over the years, but with that campaign and his work on school dinners (although that led to some mothers who said their children would not eat "proper food" (well, they'd probably never seen it) passing things like burgers and chips to their offspring through the playground railings), he has at least tried to do something about it.

People blaming their lack of cooking skills on not being taught is a bit of a cop out, though. Practically everybody has at least a smartphone and access to the internet these days, and there are countless YouTube videos on how to prepare anything from a boiled egg to a cordon bleu meal. They'd perhaps be better off watching some of those instead of crap about vacuous celebrities and music videos. I never learned to cook from my mother when I was young (I wasn't interested) and only did domestic science for one year at grammar school before dropping it in favour of academic subjects, but it is easy enough to learn once you actually want to.

There is an article in today's Guardian about the fact that the Legal & General insurance company's profits have increased, and they have been able to pay a higher dividend, because people are starting to die at an earlier age now after years of life expectancy having increased. It has taken time to show through, but the unhealthy diet and lifestyle many people have is probably going to mean people dying earlier than their parents did, a complete reversal of the trend over past centuries.

Yeah i give jamie credit he seems to be really bothered and it is shameful that people are having kids and just feeding them rubbish.if you are on your own do what you want but having and "raising" kids when you cant or wont give them decent food. Nothing worse than in the U.K all you see is little kids with those horrible sugar filled shoot juice robinson bottles. They taste vile so strong and full of sugar rotting kids teeth

Of course people can educate themselves via the net but it goes futher than that. how many of the young parents now a days were brought up the same way so it becomes a cycle.if it wasnt the norm growing up its not something in most cases you end up doing as an adult. im a lot younger than most on this board and im prob the last generation of kids who if they were lucky had a stay at home mum who cooked good homecooked food. Shepards pie . Sunday dinners etc etc. To generations before me that was the norm even if you didnt have much.

"They " keep saying we are living longer. Funny considering the data that came out yesterday showing that people in the north die 20 years before those in the south. Those living longer are the rich middle classes with good access to healthcare and nice pensions. Look at the death sections in any northern paper dont need an study to tell you that

elusive wrote:d. Nothing worse than in the U.K all you see is little kids with those horrible sugar filled shoot juice robinson bottles. They taste vile so strong and full of sugar rotting kids teeth

Very unfair and libellous to name and shame Robinsons with this accusation regarding sugar and rotting teeth as 98% of their Range is specifically "NO ADDED SUGAR" see below quote from Robinsons.

"In 2015 we removed loads of calories from our Robinsons range. Because of this, 98% of our entire range of squash contains no added sugar. Now, the only trace of sugar you’ll find within our no added sugar range, is naturally occurring from our fruit juices.

Here at Robinsons, we are committed to ensuring our products do not compromise on taste, which is why the only two products you will find with added sugar are our classic Barley Waters.

The British dental association recommends squash as the next best alternative after water and milk, therefore for those of you who find water boring, Robinsons squash is a great way to add flavour".

elusive wrote:"They " keep saying we are living longer. Funny considering the data that came out yesterday showing that people in the north die 20 years before those in the south. Those living longer are the rich middle classes with good access to healthcare and nice pensions. Look at the death sections in any northern paper dont need an study to tell you that

My aunt lives in the North West and has just turned 93. Far from having a nice pension she gets Pension Credit because she could not build up sufficient NI contributions to quality for a full state pension due to having to give up her job and be a full time carer for my grandfather for over 20 years. She still cooks real food for herself every day, though, and neither smokes nor drinks.

There are areas in the South where life expectancy is pretty similar to the North, and more affluent areas of the North where life expectancy is higher.

Of course theres always exceptions my aunt died yesterday at 90 coming from a large family of a coal miner growing up in the poorest areas of a northern city the rest of siblings were lucky to get to 40 but thats another story.i had a great uncle who smoked like a chimeny and drank like a fish lived to be 90 plus. doesnt mean that smoking isnt bad for you.theres enough studies and facts to show the length and quality of life depending on class/ wealth/regional variations.

But the facts like what was released yesterday say alot. Even in that study the poorest people in the south out live the poorest in the north. Class and postcode lottery is a huge factor in uk always has alway will.

36g of sugar in a fruit shoot around 8 teaspoons at a drink aimed at kids.fruit shoots arent squash to be diluted.they are juices that dentists warn against giving young children because of decay problems.partial to the robinsons peach squash although at work it was nicknamed my sample bottle as it was so weak it looked like you know what!

I certainly don't miss that but it's not typical in the north of Spain to have tiles. We have wooden floors and rugs. I don't miss carpets in toilets.

Paulinmalaga wrote:Every so often I miss sitting in an English Pub garden with a Wilshire Ham and Stilton Ploughmans and a pint of draught Cider.

Not a fan of cheese but like the pub for food. Eating out in London is much better than In Bilbao basically because of the variety available. I had my first English breakfast for months in a pub for 5 quid all in and another day a tasty curry in a rather trendy restaurant just off Regent street. Restaurants here tend to all offer very similar food.

Down here we have 'Overseas' or otherwise known as 'Iceland' supermarkets which have everything you could wish for and also carry a range of Waitrose stuff.

What do I miss? For me it is loose tea, I always get people to bring over Sainsbury Gold bags of Fairtrade loose tea because in my experience all loose tea in Spain tastes like house dust. I think maybe it hangs around too long...........